Android 3.0 Honeycomb SDK previewed

Following on the recent video of Android 3.0 Honeycomb preview, Google has officially published a preview of the upcoming tablet-optimized Android 3.0 Honeycomb SDK along with more details. Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) is a new version of the Android platform that is designed from the ground up for devices with larger display sizes, particularly tablets. As you may already know, Android 3.0 also introduces a new “holographic” UI theme and an interaction model that builds on multitasking, notifications, widgets, and others, and adds many new features as well.

Quoted from the Google Android Developer blog:

UI framework for creating great apps for larger screen devices: Developers can use a new UI components, new themes, richer widgets and notifications, drag and drop, and other new features to create rich and engaging apps for users on larger screen devices.

High-performance 2D and 3D graphics: A new property-based animation framework lets developers add great visual effects to their apps. A built-in GL renderer lets developers request hardware-acceleration of common 2D rendering operations in their apps, across the entire app or only in specific activities or views. For adding rich 3D scenes, developers take advantage of a new 3D graphics engine called Renderscript.

Support for multicore processor architectures: Android 3.0 is optimized to run on either single- or dual-core processors, so that applications run with the best possible performance.

Rich multimedia: New multimedia features such as HTTP Live streaming support, a pluggable DRM framework, and easy media file transfer through MTP/PTP, give developers new ways to bring rich content to users.

New types of connectivity: New APIs for Bluetooth A2DP and HSP let applications offer audio streaming and headset control. Support for Bluetooth insecure socket connection lets applications connect to simple devices that may not have a user interface.

Enhancements for enterprise: New administrative policies, such as for encrypted storage and password expiration, help enterprise administrators manage devices more effectively.

For an complete overview of the new user and developer features, you can learn more the Android 3.0 Platform Highlights from http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-3.0-highlights.html.